There was a factional
division among the Armenian workers sympathetic to the Comintern
in the early 1920s. Two organizations competed with each other,
the Armenian Workers Party and the former Social
Democratic Hunchakist Party.

On December 27, 1923,
the battle between these two organizations for the mantle of
the CI was taken up by the Executive Committee of the Comintern,
which adopted a resolution demanding that Comrade Sunarin and
his group which had bolted the Workers Party return to party
ranks. An Armenian Conference was additionally to be carried
out following the convocation of the WPA’s 3rd Convention at
the end of December 1923. This conference was to definitely form
the Armenian Section of the Workers Party.

The CEC of the WPA
set Feb. 22, 1924 as the date and Boston the locale for the convention
to form the Armenian Section of the WPA. The Armenian section
would be the 18th language group of the WPA.

1.
Unity Convention —- Boston, MA —- Feb. 22, 1924.

Therer were a total
of 38 delegates to the Unity Convention — 19 delegates from
16 branches of the “Armenian Federation of the Workers Party,
Social Democratic Huntchakist”and 19 delegates from 16
branches of the Armenian Workers Party, which had not been affiliated
with the WPA prior to the convention.

The unity program was
proposed by C.E. Ruthenberg, who represented the WPA at the convention.
Provisions of the agreeement called for recognition of both groups
and issuance of membership cards and dues stamps to both groups;
a requirement that within 3 months the branches of the two groups
would merge into a single organization, with one branch in each
city; a requirement that a Bureau be elected by each of the groups
under condition of a prohibition of factional activity, including
letters and circulars. At the end of the 3 month period, the
CEC of the WPA was to either appoint a Bureau to represent the
United Armenian Section or call an new convention. Branches or
individuals failing to carry out or hindering execution of the
unity program were to be subject to expulsion from the WPA.

1920

DECEMBER

“United Communist Party — “Groups"
According to Language: As of December 1920.”This is based upon an internal document of
the United Communist Party captured by the Department of Justice’s
Bureau of Investigation in the April 1921 raid on UCP National
Headquarters in New York. The UCP prided itself on having largely
eliminated the federation-based form of organization which typified
its rival, the Communist Party of America. Groups (Primary Party
Units of between 5 and 10 members) were nevertheless based around
language as well as geography and statistics tabulated by the
organization. This snapshot from the midpoint of the UCP’s one
year of existence surprisingly shows more South Slavic (Croatian
and Slovenian) language groups than any other (144), followed
by the Russian (136), English (121), German (61), Latvian (49),
Yiddish (37), Lithuanian (34), and Finnish (31) language groups.

undetermined
date

“Membership
Series by Language Federation for the Workers Party of America.
‘Dues Actually Paid’ — January to December 1923.”Official 1923 data set of the
Workers Party of America, compiled from a document in the Comintern
Archive. This series shows a great numerical dominance of the
WPA by its Finnish Federation, accounting for a massive 42.8%
of the average monthly paid membership of the organization (6,583
of 15,395). The total of the English language branches is the
2nd strongest amongst the federations (7.6%) followed by the
South Slavic (7.5%), Jewish [Yiddish language] (6.9%), and Lithuanian
(6.0%) Federations. In all, there were statistics kept for 18
different language groups of the WPA in 1923, including the English
and the barely organized Armenian sections.

Initiation
Stamps Sold by Federation for the Workers Party of America. January
to December 1923. Official
1923 data set of the Workers Party of America, compiled from
a document in the Comintern Archive. This series once again (repeating
the previous published 1924 series) shows a schizophrenic pattern
of stamp sales among language groups . Some federations clearly
did not collect the initiation fees called for in the WPA constitution
at all (Jewish, German, Latvian) while at the same time the quantities
sold via the English branches are ridiculously high. Over 53%
of the initiation stamps sold for the entire WPA were credited
to the English branches — nearly three times as many initiations
than there were average duespayers in those English branches!
Even assuming a significantly higher than average “membership
churn”rate for English branches, there is clearly some
other unexplained phenomenon at play in these English branch
initiation stamp sale figures...

undetermined
date

“Membership
Series by Language Federation for the Workers Party of America.
‘Dues Actually Paid’ — January to December 1924.”Official 1924 data set of the
Workers Party of America, compiled from a document in the Comintern
Archive. This shows a continued numerical dominance of the Workers
Party of America by its Finnish-language federation, averaging
a paid membership of 7100 (41% of the entire organization) for
the year 1924. Impressive growth is shown by the Yiddish-language
("Jewish") federation, which moved to the third largest
language group in the WPA in 1924. The English branches comprised
the second largest language group in the WPA, but still remained
just 11% of the overall organization. The South Slavic federation
(predominately Slovenian and Croation) was the 4th largest language
group in the WPA, topping the Russian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian
federations.

“Initiation
Stamps Sold by Federation for the Workers Party of America. January
to December 1924.”Official
1924 data set of the Workers Party of America, compiled from
a document in the Comintern Archive. An extremely interesting
monthly series in which two unexplained anomalies are apparent:
(1) The failure of at least 8 of the WPA’s 18 language sections
to make more than a token effort to collect the $1 initiation
fee and obvious similar behavior (to lesser degree) among branches
of other language groups; (2) A preposterously large sale of
5,264 initiation stamps to “English”branches, which
averaged a paid membership of just 1909 over the course of the
year. Either there was a revolving door in the English branches
that was entirely dissimilar to the situation in any other language
group of the WPA; or there was some sort of effort to collect
initiation fees among “English”workers without organizational
follow up; or there was some sort of strange accounting practice
used by the WPA in which miscellaneous sales of initiation stamps
were lumped into the “English”category (or some combination
of these explanations). A perplexing question in raised, with
further archival research clearly necessary.